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Monthly Archives: March 2016

‘But how can it be I am guilty before anyone?’ each of them would say, laughing in my face [even good naturedly]. ‘Well, how can I be guilty before you, for example?’ ‘Oh,’ I replied to them, ‘how can you hope to understand that, when the whole world has long been progressing along another road, and when downright falsehood is considered by us as truth, and when we expect and demand similar falsehood from others.’

Like this:

One thing to consider: A democracy is a messy proposition, and at times more messy than other times. The Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, did not create a direct-democracy but a republican form of democratic state. This helps mitigate some of the craziness. An assembly of sane, rational, even if at times passionate, representatives of the People are to make decisions for the good of the People.

We need to remember that the Constitution, that profoundly liberal and radical document of its time, was preceded by the Declaration of Independence. When a government no longer responds to the wishes or needs of the citizenry, men and women have the right and obligation to take affairs into their own hands.

Can we understand that the rise in popularity of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders may be further explained as the result of a citizenry absolutely at their wits end with the Washington status quo? Nothing the People do – who they elect – seems to change the perceived fact that “representatives of the people” consider less and less the wishes and needs of the People.

The People believe the Government as it is, is broken. What then shall they do – shall we do? Would we rather have plutocracy? meritocracy? oligarchy? authoritarianism?

While these times are not the same kind of times as where the mid-to-late 1700’s, the People in these times may be ready to throw off caution in order to bring the Government back down to earth. We need to be vary careful… very careful!

From the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”

Like this:

The Republican Party apparatus has to realize that this trash-Trump tactic is simply not going to work. The reasons people are showing support for Trump have little to do with whether they think he is virtuous or not – most know he is not. They express their support for Trump out of protest – they are sick and tired of “politics as usual,” whether from conservatives or liberals.
Nothing else has stopped “politics as usual” so far, so why not try Trump.

Someone said to me, recently, that we have Trump as the natural progression of decades of forced political correctness – this phenomenon is the natural result of it. If the “political correctness” juggernaut results in simply shutting-up people who attempt to express opinions that are not currently in vogue (liberal vogue or conservative vogue) without actually changing hearts and minds, this is the kind of end result. Out of pure frustration and insult, people will support someone who forcibly does the opposite of the demands of the current arbiters of political correctness (or accepted respectability).

I don’t believe that the majority of people who express support for Trump are unthinking, bigoted, misogynist, etc., idiots as Trump opponents like to assert. (Some are, but, some liberals are, too.) And, of course, the popular media feeds the controversy.

This is protest, and we are foolish if we don’t heed the tea leaves. The more the Party apparatus or others try to bring Trump down the presumed “usual way,” the more they are going to fail. Keep piling it on – it just makes the protest more fun for those protesting.